onbin

Onbin (Japanese "euphony") is a set of sound changes that occurred in Early Middle Japanese around the end of the eighth century to the beginning of the tenth century, first attested in written texts of the Heian period. Onbin changes affected certain consonant-vowel sequences in non-word-initial position, causing them to become replaced with either a single vowel sound (as in , from earlier ) or a single consonant sound (as in , from earlier ). (In some cases, this also caused a change in the pronunciation of the preceding vowel or following consonant, as in the development of original to in .) Onbin played a role in diversifying the syllable structure of native Japanese words by creating heavy syllables that ended in two vowels or in a vowel followed by a consonant.

Historical onbin changes did not occur systematically, and some sequences could yield multiple outcomes. The non-deterministic nature of the historical sound changes is exemplified by doublets showing different outcomes of the same original form, such as (without onbin) versus (with u-onbin) from original , or (with N-onbin) versus (with u-onbin) from original . However, some onbin changes have come to be grammaticalized in the conjugation of Japanese verbs: as a result, certain verbs systematically display an "onbin stem" before certain suffixes in standard modern Japanese. The formation of these onbin stems varies between dialects.

Sound changes

The outcomes of onbin changes were bound moraic phonemes pronounced in the same syllable as the preceding vowel. Four distinct outcomes can be identified based on modern Japanese kana spellings: the two high vowels and the two moraic consonants :
*, currently spelled as い in hiragana and イ in katakana (romanized as )
*, currently spelled as う in hiragana and ウ in katakana (forms long vowels romanized as or )
* or N-onbin, currently spelled as ん in hiragana and ン in katakana (romanized as syllable-final )
* or Q-onbin, currently spelled as っ in hiragana and ッ in katakana (romanized as consonant doubling)

divides i-onbin and u-onbin into two categories based on whether they were originally nasalized, and so recognizes six possible outcomes of onbin in the Early Middle Japanese period: .

The core set of onbin changes affected non-word-initial syllables that contained the consonants followed by . (In this context, represents a consonant phoneme derived from Proto-Japonic *p: it was some kind of bilabial consonant in Early Middle Japanese, although its exact pronunciation is debated. The syllables transcribed here as are sometimes alternatively romanized as "fa fi fu fe fo" or "ha hi fu he ho": the use of "h" is anachronistic in terms of Early Middle Japanese pronunciation, but corresponds to the modern pronunciation of the kana that were used to spell these syllables in historical kana orthography, before Japanese script reform.) Some onbin changes could affect word-final syllables, such as the change of to (as in to 'empress') or to (as in to 'in this way'), and occasionally to , or to or (as in to 'courtier'). In contrast, onbin changes involving seem to be attested only in the middle of words.

These core changes can be summarized as follows:

Subscript numbers distinguish syllables that were different in Old Japanese, as indicated by man'yōgana, but that merged in the transition to Early Middle Japanese. considers it likely that onbin changes affected only and not (and so took place before their merger), whereas disagrees. Since syllables with /i₂/ were less frequent, the relevant evidence is limited, and there is a possible case of > in the word , normally derived from Old Japanese tuki₂ "moon, month": Frellesvig argues this could be a folk etymology.

Additional changes

When the consonant in the affected sequence was either nasal or prenasalized , onbin produced a nasal output: either a nasalized high vowel or a moraic nasal consonant . These nasal sounds caused following to be replaced with their prenasalized counterparts, . By Late Middle Japanese, the nasalized vowels had merged with , and the change of to after a nasal sound ceased to apply as an automatic process, although it had lasting effects on the form of some inflectional morphemes and lexicalized compound words.

During Late Middle Japanese, vowel sequences ending in (including that derived from earlier ) fused into long vowels (which can be phonologically analyzed as sequences of two identical vowel phonemes in one syllable). If the first vowel was originally or , the resulting long vowel was preceded by a palatal glide . This produced the following outcomes:

Because of this vowel fusion, words with u-onbin, such as , do not always contain the vowel phoneme in modern Japanese, although they are still spelled with the kana う/ウ (u) because of a convention of spelling long non-phonetically in this context.

In verbs and adjectives

Verb stems

As a result of onbin changes, consonant-stem verbs developed variant "onbin stems" used before certain suffixes (in modern Japanese, the past , gerund , conditional , and representative ). Consonant-stem verbs are those that can be analyzed as having underlying stems that end in a consonant (in modern Japanese, any of ): these verbs take the suffix in the dictionary form, in contrast to vowel-stem verbs, which have stems that end in either or and take the suffix in the dictionary form. In Japanese grammatical terminology, consonant-stem verbs are called verbs, because their inflected forms make use of the five kana that represent the stem-final consonant plus each of the five Japanese vowels (). Verbs with stems ending in show an additional complication: stem-final is deleted before suffixes that start with , since Japanese phonotactics only allow to occur before the vowel . In terms of historical development, verb stems that end in originally ended in the consonant *p.

The onbin stem developed from the Early Middle Japanese infinitive () form, which ended in . When the infinitive form of a consonant-stem verb ended in one of the syllables , it could undergo the onbin sound changes described above. In addition, it came to be possible for to undergo analogous changes in this context: thus, could become (as in > , > ) and could become (as in > ). argues that verbs with stems ending in developed onbin stems purely as a result of the morphological process of analogy, rather than as a result of the same phonetic processes as the other onbin changes.

In modern Standard Japanese, the form of a verb's onbin stem can typically be predicted from the underlying stem-final consonant: give , give (with voicing of the following to in the suffix), gives , and gives (with voicing of the following to in the suffix). Verbs with underlying stems ending in do not show onbin in contemporary standard speech, but instead use () before the relevant suffixes.

: is the only n-stem verb in modern Japanese.

A few verbs have an exceptionally formed onbin stem. For example:
* the verb (stem ) has an onbin stem in , e.g. , rather than the expected .
* the verbs and (stems , , originally -, -) have u-onbin stems, e.g. , , rather than the expected .
* the honorific verbs , , , , and all exhibit an i-onbin stem prior to the polite auxiliary verb , e.g. , , etc., rather than the expected non-onbin form . These verbs have the expected onbin forms before suffixes , , , .

Dialects show some differences in the formation of onbin stems. Some dialects regularly use u-onbin (with fusion of to ) for verb with underlying stems that end in (where standard Japanese has Q-onbin) or verbs with underlying stems that end in (where standard Japanese has N-onbin).
* Use of u-onbin for verbs with stems that end in (original ) is a feature of dialects spoken in western regions, such as Kansai (including Kyoto) and Kyushu. For example, in the Kyoto dialect the verb (stem ) has the past form , in contrast to standard Japanese . The 17th-century ''Arte da Lingoa de Iapam'' by João Rodrigues identified the use of u-onbin in this context as a feature of the Japanese spoken in Kyoto, in contrast to the use of Q in the Kanto dialect.
* Use of u-onbin for verbs with stems that end in is found on Kyushu and in the far west of Honshu; in contrast, in Kyoto and most of Kansai, these verbs currently show consonantal onbin as in the standard language. For example, in some dialects the verb (stem ) has the gerund form , in contrast to (used in standard Japanese and in the Kyoto dialect). The voicing of the suffix to indicates that these u-onbin forms originally contained nasalized .
* Use of i-onbin for verbs with stems that end in survives dialectally in some regions, including much of Kansai (although not in Kyoto). Thus, forms such as can occur in place of standard for the gerund of the verb (stem ).
* Some dialect forms show consonantal onbin in verbs with stems ending in or , where standard Japanese has i-onbin.

The use of onbin stems in inflected verb forms never become normative in literary written Classical Japanese. It is difficult to tell how frequent they were in speech at various historical periods.

, citing , gives the following chronology for the written attestation of onbin in verb forms:
* to : seen from the late 9th century.
* to : rarely seen until the mid 10th century, from which point it is found regularly.
* (original ) to : seen from the first half of the 11th century.
* to : seen sporadically from 11th century, becoming regular at the end of the 16th century.

However, suggests that onbin changes must have been active well before these dates, arguing that they precede the intervocalic merger of and (dated at the latest to the end of the 10th century) and most likely began in the early 9th century or even the late 8th century.

Adjective endings

Two suffixes used in the inflection of adjectives underwent onbin changes. The Old Japanese adnominal ending developed by onbin into the Late Middle Japanese and Modern Japanese nonpast ending , as in , the nonpast form of the adjective stem . The adjectival infinitive ending developed an onbin variant : however, remains the normal form of this ending in Standard Japanese. The use of (which fuses with the preceding vowel) as an adjectival infinitive ending is a characteristic of the language spoken in the Kansai (including Kyoto) and Kyushu regions. Using the adjective again as an example, the Kansai dialect form corresponds to the Standard Japanese infinitive . The pronunciation of the adjectival infinitive ending as in Kyoto vs. in the Kanto region is mentioned as a dialectal difference in Rodrigues' ''Arte da Lingoa de Iapam''. The variant ending shows some limited use in Standard Japanese as part of the rarely used "super-polite" construction (which occurs when the adjective is followed by the copula ) and in a few isolated, fixed expressions: its use in these contexts can be attributed to borrowing from the Kyoto dialect.

Phonetic development

Onbin sound changes likely had their roots in earlier phonetic variation in the pronunciation of Old Japanese consonants and vowels. Namely, the Old Japanese consonants might have varied phonetically between voiceless stops , voiced stops , voiceless fricatives , and voiced continuants . The consonants were prenasalized and possibly could vary between stops and continuants ; vowels before were likely phonetically nasalized. The high vowels could possibly be reduced to coarticulations � ʷon the preceding consonant.

Between vowels in the middle of a word, original merged with the phoneme around the second half of the tenth century or during the 11th century. After this merger, eventually was lost before any vowel other than . At the start of a word, original had come to be regularly pronounced as a voiceless labial fricative by the end of the 16th century (later on, a 17-18th century sound change turned into before any vowel other than ). It was once widely thought that was completely replaced with already in Old Japanese, but argues that this assumption is not well justified. According to the traditional assumption, intervocalic merged with as a result of being voiced to . According to a competing hypothesis, word-medial intervocalic was already phonetically voiced or in Early Middle Japanese prior to its merger with .

Consonantal variants of verbal onbin stems are attested later than the vocalic variants, but this does not necessarily mean that consonantal onbin are chronologically more recent sound changes: it could simply mean that the varieties of speech in which they arose were not well represented in writing until later on.

There is disagreement about the exact phonetic path by which onbin developed. The development of the consonantal onbin N and Q can be explained in terms of vowel deletion, whereas the development of i- and u-onbin can be interpreted as involving deletion of consonants between vowels. If intervocalic consonant deletion is the correct explanation for the origin of u-onbin from sequences involving original labial consonants (), then the deletion of these consonants must have been preceded by a sound change that turned into in contexts where onbin would occur. Such a change does appear to be attested by spelling variations in texts from the 11th and 12th centuries, although some of this evidence admits other interpretations (such as a change of in this context to a moraic sound). The hypothesis of intervocalic consonant deletion implies that in cases where i-onbin or u-onbin is derived from a consonant-vowel sequence that originally started with a nasal or prenasalized consonant, the change of following to prenasalized (modern voiced) was not caused by assimilation between adjacent consonants; rather, it may have arisen by 'rightward' (progressive) spreading of nasality from a phonetically nasalized vowel that originally preceded the deleted consonant. The following examples illustrate ways i- and u-onbin might have developed per this approach:
*
*
*
*

De Chene 1991 advocates an alternative account for the development of i-onbin from original and u-onbin from original , arguing there was an initial change of to moraic , to moraic , and to moraic , followed by vocalization of moraic to and of moraic and to (in cases where they did not alternatively become ). In support, de Chene cites the development of from original in the form ''kauburu'' "to place on the head' from ''kagapuru'', arguing that this is easier to explain in terms of moraic nasal formation and vocalization ( > > ) rather than intervocalic consonant loss. De Chene also argues that the lack of onbin outcomes for word-final and implies that the development of these sequences to and involved a different mechanism from the intervocalic consonant deletion seen in the development of to , which could occur word-finally. Like de Chene, considers it possible that became by means of vocalization of , as in . De Chene interprets the use in Heian-era texts of the "mu" kana in the spelling of words like "yomutaru" as an orthographic device representing moraic ; the following examples illustrate the development of u-onbin according to this approach:
* >
*

Instead of vowel or consonant deletion, prefers to explain onbin as a consequence of phonetic reduction of both the consonant and vowel, resulting in their fusion into a single phonetic segment (e.g. ): that could then be phonologically reinterpreted as a single phoneme (vocalic or consonantal). The following example illustrates Frellesvig's approach to explaining onbin:
*

Reduction to mere prenasalization

The onbin sound changes discussed above turned consonant-vowel sequences (such as or ) into single segments (such as ) that still counted as a mora when measuring the length of a word. However, some words appear to show a similar but distinct outcome, where a sequence such as or was reduced to prenasalization of the following consonant without leaving a moraic phoneme behind. These outcomes might be the result of sporadic reductions that were similar to onbin changes but occurred earlier, during time periods when syllables were only permitted to end in a short vowel. Reduction of the genitive particle ''no'' or the dative particle ''ni'' may be the origin of rendaku, or voicing of the second element of a Japanese compound word, which occurs often but not automatically.

Examples:
*Old Japanese 'trawling' from * 'net-pull(ing)', from 'pheasant', from * 'mountain-path'
*Early Middle Japanese from and from

Examples of lexical onbin

The words listed below show the effects of onbin as a sound change, not including the grammatical onbin seen in verb and adjective forms. Many examples are compound words, in which case the first consonant of the second element may or may not become voiced as a result of rendaku. In some cases, it is not possible to determine whether rendaku was present before the application of onbin sound changes.

U-onbin

From ''-hito''

The Old Japanese morpheme 'person' (Modern Japanese ; with ''rendaku'' ) often shows u-onbin as the second element of a compound, producing words ending in or , or with rendaku, or . Examples include:

From other core sources

Other examples from core sources (as per Frellesvig's categorization), excluding morphological onbin in verb and adjective inflection:

From other sequences

I-onbin

Examples from core sources (as per Frellesvig's categorization), excluding morphological onbin in verb and adjective inflection:

N-onbin (hatsuonbin)

Examples from core sources (as per Frellesvig's categorization), excluding morphological onbin in verb and adjective inflection:

From other sequences:

Q-onbin (sokuonbin)

Examples from core sources (as per Frellesvig's categorization), excluding morphological onbin in verb and adjective inflection:

From other sequences:

Notes

References

Bibliography

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

Further reading

* {{cite thesis
, last = Erickson
, first = Blaine
, title = The Origins and Development of Japanese Mora Nasals
, degree = PhD
, year = 1998

History of the Japanese language
Japanese phonology